COMUN 2019 Practice Debates 2&3

The Colombo Model United Nations’ final conference is coming soon and will be hosted at the Cinnamon Lakeside hotel this year. In COMUN delegates from most Sri Lankan schools and some foreign schools learn about current affairs, diplomacy, international affairs and relations, and the United Nations. This year it’s COMUN’s 25^th year of being hosted by The Overseas School of Colombo and for it’s 25^th session all executive members are working hard to make it the best session so far. Before the conference we have 3 practice debates to be done and this posts concentrates on my 2^nd and 3^rd COMUN practice debates in which I was developing my technological skills in Photoshop and using my experience from Week Without Walls of using the DSLR camera to take pictures during the day. Practice debates are held as a training for all the executive members and delegates to understand how COMUN works and specially for the tech team to practice and sort out all the equipment and work needed to be done for the final conference, in which I’m the Deputy Head of Technology. This CAS blog is a continuation of my CAS post of ‘COMUN PD1’ with the same focus on the learning outcomes of showing commitment and demonstrate skills and the benefit of working collaboratively, but now developing skills and collaboration even further.

After the 1^st practice debate I felt quite confident in working for COMUN this year as I understood the procedure. In this  2^nd practice debate I was experiencing with taking pictures on behalf of the Head of Media, Milo and working collaboratively with the other Deputy Head of Tech, Youghi for creating and changing several past COMUN accounts and servers. This was not something new for me but I showed some commitment towards finishing up all the servers on that day, by which new information about COMUN 2019 can be posted there along with new email accounts for the committees. In terms of debates, when I went to several committees to check on the point system and if any technical work needed, I watched many debates on several topics and felt quite interested into it.

Through the debates among delegates I was able to learn more precisely about the current and past events we had in our world and how there are different perspectives from different countries for an event. On this day I was also able to learn more about my peers in the tech team, Head of Technology (Anuda), Head of Media (Milo), and Deputy Head of Technology (Youghi), about their student life and personality. During the day we helped each other with several works and I felt quite confident in working with Photoshop and servers because I knew my peers will be there to help me out. When I began working with creating accounts and servers, the Head and Deputy Head of Technology helped me with organization, committee allocations, and how to save time by using several short cut methods in creating accounts for all committees and servers. During this day every member in the tech department was very productive and we managed to accomplish many tasks such as generating email accounts, watermarking all images, and many more.

2 weeks after practice debate 2 we had our 3^rd and final practice debate of COMUN 2019 in which there were a lot of technical work to be accomplished such as delegate and Exco ID cards, placards, photos for the 3^rd practice debate, and magazine designing. Since we are 4 members in total, we split our work and I was working with designing the Exco and delegate ID cards and take some photos with the Head of Media. On this day I got less chance to work with the camera because of the ID card designs to be made. I spent the whole day doing this work because I wanted this year’s ID cards to look quite unique and professional because it’s the 25^th year of COMUN this year.

While I was designing ID cards I was able to learn many new functions in Adobe Photoshop by experimenting myself and using YouTube tutorial videos. I felt very confident in using Adobe Photoshop for editing images in different formats. During this time I learned how to control the clarity, clearness, sharpness, and death effect of images, how to crop freely on an image, which was an overall achievement for me. On this day my task was to finish creating designs for ID cards for delegates and Exco members which was more than 30 designs, but thanks to the Head of Tech, Anuda, who taught me many short cuts in Photoshop which saved a lot more time and was able to finish the task with the given time frame I had set for myself, which was by the end of the day.

Besides editing images and photos, I also learned how to shoot still videos using camera stabilizers and tried taking some footage of the debates. By the end of the day I was very exhausted after working for straight 7 hours but I was happy that ID cards were done and now we can start printing them. When I went back home after all the work, I thought we as a tech team are ready for the final conference because everything was prepared. All we needed was the print outs of ID cards and placards, besides that all point system, email accounts, servers, social media, photo watermarking, and many more tasks were accomplished in the past 3 practice debates which should contribute to make the 25^th session of COMUN a great success.

Overall all the practices debates were helpful for my own learning of designing, Photoshop, and server and accounts. Now I was looking forward to see the prints of the ID cards and the placards, also was looking forward for the final conference in another 2 weeks which will be my last 3 days of being in COMUN and the Deputy Head of Technology for COMUN 2019 because next final year I’m planning to be focused on exams, universities,  and might try out some new creative activities. From a social perspective I think these 3 practice debates were very useful for us as a tech team for socializing beyond the school walls, spending a lot of time together, preparing for the conference, and most importantly having fun and learn new experiences on each practice debate. From here now we will proceed towards the final conference of COMUN 2019 in the upcoming post.